Back in June, Slate published a piece about adults reading books meant for kids, making the case that we should read more sophisticated, age-appropriate material. Three days later, Medium published a response entitled “Why Criticizing Young Adult Fiction is Sexist.” If irritation were fatal, I’d have perished where I sat.

But my patience around other purportedly feminist issues had been tried in smaller ways. Like last year, when Sheryl Sandberg declared that the word “bossy” needed to be reclaimed. #BanBossy, the moms on my Facebook feed chorused, bragging about how they were going to teach their daughters that being bossy was actually great. Now, there is a reasonable conversation to [...]

I went swimming in Scotts Flat Lake for the first time this year on Saturday. I went because it was hot and also because I had a horrible hangover and swimming used to really knock out a hangover for me.

Scotts Flat Lake is a reservoir. It’s manmade. That might seem obvious to you but I had no idea that reservoirs were man made until I was well into my 30s. I also didn’t know Tony Blair was the Prime Minister of England until he’d been in office for about three years, and I lived in Los Angeles for six years before I figured out that the Staples Center was [...]

1. HEADLINES: Font size in headlines should be completely arbitrary. Sometimes the name is emphasized (JAY Z) sometimes the event is emphasized (SUFFERS SEIZURE AT REHAB) sometimes a random phrase (MERCIFUL JUDGE) is emphasized. Whatever is emphasized is not as important as the fact that something is emphasized.

2. PUNCTUATION: Whenever possible, ellipses should be used instead of periods and commas. Two dashes (–) can be used in exactly the same way an ellipse might be used. Both an ellipse and a dash can be used in the same sentence, like here: "In the photo … Willow Smith is in bed — fully clothed and on top of the covers — and an actor [...]

I went to San Francisco last weekend. I drove there. I wanted to take the train, which is much more civilized, but it’s kind of expensive, and it’s just not that convenient, so I drove. I left Nevada City at 9 p.m. and arrived just before midnight. After the hot, slightly smoky air in the foothills the cool gray dampness of the Bay Area in the summertime felt heavenly. I paid the Bay Bridge toll collector in dimes and quarters, and it was only $4. I thought of all the time I’d spent scouring my bedroom for that last dollar and how I’d never get it back.

When I woke up this morning to see that a friend of mine had sent me Tom Junod’s essay, "In Praise of 42 Year Old Women," I felt a lot of things. First of all, I felt happy. I mean, I had been following Junod’s career for many years, and so I've watched him begin so many articles with the word “You.” And this piece began with “Let’s face it,” which was obviously progress. So yeah, I felt good, the kind of good you feel when you see a kid who always walks in Little League get a hit, or when your dog is choking on a piece [...]

Perhaps a quote from an outside source could help clarify this, and the outside source I choose to cite is me. I cite a column I wrote last Monday, which, I believe, qualifies because, according to the philosopher David Hume, we are merely an aggregate of our experiences, and the David Brooks who sat down [...]

A couple of days ago I started trying out this thing, vaguely related to my yoga practice, wherein I am basically supposed to “speak softly or medium-soft” for 40 consecutive days. There are a lot of ways to interpret this directive, which I like to think was translated from Gurmukhi and originally said something like, “Try not to spend all your time just going off on shit.”

The night before the challenge was to start I went to dinner with my boyfriend at his friend Mark’s house. I get along fine with Mark, but Mark had a friend there, and right away, I could tell Mark’s friend probably didn’t know [...]

We were paddling around in this nice clear pool. It was peaceful and calm and other than us there were only two dudes, somewhere in between the genre of local grower types but possibly Oakland hipsters, swimming around. Then their two pit bulls jumped in. They looked like nice enough pit bulls but they seemed to be getting rather close to us and their paws—which probably each weighed about three pounds—churned the green water like turbines. We gave the pit bulls wary smiles even though pit bulls don’t understand wary smiles.

One of the grower/possibly urban hipsters spoke up then: “Oh, yeah, sometimes they scratch while they’re swimming, so you have [...]